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Yes, xtools is going to be released soon. Wish I could say more, but I'm under an NDA with sidefx

I've seen some of the stuff other people are doing with assets, and their stuff makes xtools look like junk. lol

I'm going to be putting up tutorials and videos on how to use the stuff at http://xtools.ws, but I'm very busy this month and likely won't get to it soon.

I just started work on xBitmap

It's a VEX node that lets you load bitmaps into a shader more easily. I put in most of the parameters from the Bitmap texture in 3dsMax, and it'll also output normals for displacement/bump mapping. Should make life easier for most.

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You said "I've seen some of the stuff other people are doing with assets, and their stuff makes xtools look like junk.". Where did you see them?

This is something I noticed with Houdini digital assets, custom OPs. Supposedly there are some ultra powerful ones out there but where are they? If I finish my own collection, I will gladly share it all.

Also why aren't sidefx actively encouraging people to share their stuff, and based on the collective feedback add them to the subsequently releases of Houdini, and potentially give people prizes for this? I don't mean every little thing but things that people say "wow that's very useful/powerful". It would make Houdini 10x better, as it's all in the finer details IMO.

The advantage of this for authors of these assets would be that they wouldn't have to distribute them.

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You said "I've seen some of the stuff other people are doing with assets, and their stuff makes xtools look like junk.". Where did you see them?

This is something I noticed with Houdini digital assets, custom OPs. Supposedly there are some ultra powerful ones out there but where are they? If I finish my own collection, I will gladly share it all.

Also why aren't sidefx actively encouraging people to share their stuff, and based on the collective feedback add them to the subsequently releases of Houdini, and potentially give people prizes for this? I don't mean every little thing but things that people say "wow that's very useful/powerful". It would make Houdini 10x better, as it's all in the finer details IMO.

The advantage of this for authors of these assets would be that they wouldn't have to distribute them.

SideFX is a small studio and that task is surprisingly large to manage and deal with all of these tools created, or for they themselves to create tools, like a common set of production level shaders. I've seen a bunch of tools at the shop I've visited or worked at that are no brainers to be included. Most people would like to share, and some have the NDA issues as already cited. There have a been a few notable ones like the Vornoi Fracture Sop that have gotten rolled in from the community(the diff communities and SideFX are pretty closely tied together). Also there have been many studio level tools from different companies that have been rolled in, as the industry does drive development.

I believe the criteria for SideFX is if the tool is good for a base component that is commonly used to build other tools and it falls within legal control than it may be able to rolled in. I have a feeling the volume tools from 10 to 11 were like this, all the sudden there were like 10 new tools for sop level control.

To think of this on the other hand for an opposite perspective if you had everybody include their tools into Houdini you would literally have tens of thousand of nodes that are useful. A thousand nodes of otls is surprisingly easy to generate over the course of a couple major projects. My own otls have grown quite significantly as I've packaged off habits. If I repeat something 3 times I create a tool out of it, especially if it took me some thought to get it to work, so therefore a culling must happen. Who decides this? The easiest is to be strict about what you let in. Often to the seeming detriment of very good tools. Though I have to say if it really is that amazing it will eventually find it's way in there.

One seeming idea is to build a better exchange forum than the houdini exchange, something that is relevant to this decade. Which requires a lot of thought and time and probably money. Since the community is so small the financial profitability is not very high for this. This is why you don't see many plugins only Houdini. Plugins for 3DsMax are profitable since they have so many seeds across the planet. Also maintenance of this plugins or a website cost money. Since houdini updates every day this a problem, also if houdini were to roll in a plugin that is alive in the community HOT. They would need to devote a resource to maintaining it. Also if you do it for free this takes even more time and management required than just money alone, think wikipedia.

Personally I would like to see SideFX hire a website programmer that key focus is to build a modern houdini exchange that would facilitate trading otls, and suites of otls. Much like you say, maybe not rewards, though a concept like hits on you tube would be cool, maybe even to the advent of if it gets dl by 50,000 users(a threshold of half the houdini users(this number is completely imaginary)) its gets rolled into the package. A website like mymentalray.com, hdrlabs.com, but better and more designed toward the concept of suites of tools and individual tools.

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I don't think the size of a company really reflects their ability to meet customer needs. Take RIM for example, they are huge with more then 100,000 employees and look how badly they messed up. Often it's the small business that can respond quickly to change and remain agile.

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I don't think the size of a company really reflects their ability to meet customer needs. Take RIM for example, they are huge with more then 100,000 employees and look how badly they messed up. Often it's the small business that can respond quickly to change and remain agile.

I agree, SideFX daily builds are certainly noted in regards to that. I don't know of any other company like that. But that is only one factor in making a change in this regard. I've also heard the regards of using Houdini to teach math in school, which would be a genius idea such as the otl implementation/exchange, but these simple decisions need to be weighed out in a larger/macro business strategy(micro I feel is a no brain-er). The latter case although good, would potentially divest to much from their primary direction to the vfx community. There are many other things to consider in regards to this, too, but I'm already way off topic. I do agree and hope these ideas take stronger roots, I'm just playing devils advocate with past experience to the question to explain why something may or may not have happen.

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Basically points that are not connected to the Grid SOP, but just free floating in space.

You can use Convert SOP to convert everything to Circle primitives (which have just one vertex). That would place primitive circles at the center of each polygon. Use then whatever method to make use of those points (for example, an Add SOP).